In software development, there is always something new to learn. One day you're an expert; the next year you're a novice. Our success depends on how well we learn.

In this presentation and live coding demo, I'll be talking about alternatives to "fake it 'till you make it". I'll share stories about challenging learning situations, and leave you with some concrete ideas for how to make yourself an expert in the tools and practices you use at work. I hope you'll leave the talk with more confidence and excitement about learning at work (or more ideas about how to stir up that hunger to learn in others).

In the second half of the talk, we will be creating a minimal test framework from scratch (no dependencies) to explore how to de-mystify "magical" tools with toy projects.